From the desk of Lu Wei: Apple, encryption and China

Yo yo yo. It’s been a long time. Hope you don’t get up to too much trouble in the year of the monkey.

I’ve been following with interest this news about the Apple court order and I must say we are very impressed with your approach! We prefer to just directly demand that foreign companies operating in China hand over user names, passwords, PIN numbers and other personal data. But asking for this workaround is genius. Wish we had thought of that.

As you know, Apple have talked the talk but have rarely walked the walk when it comes to China. There was a time when Apple might have thought they had the upper hand on us but that lasted about 5 minutes and was in 1992! LOL. Pay no heed to Cap'n Cook’s note.

Apple is the one company we love to hold up as setting a great example for how foreign companies should be conducting themselves if they want to do business in China. Apple will do anything and everything for us - from censoring those pesky internet freedom and Free Tibet apps to storing user data on servers in China. When I pick up my iPhone to call Cap'n Cook, he’s already on the line!

I see that Cap'n Cook took exception to your reasonable request for a workaround so I thought I would reach out with some helpful advice and pro tips. You, too, can have the same leverage as we do over Apple if you just follow my simple to use, no hassles, six-step plan. I think if you adopted our approach, you could make Apple work for you like they work for the Chinese government. And if we work together, we can both achieve our mutual goal of making obsolete all private communication, everywhere in the world! Win win, me thinks.

I’d appreciate it if you don’t share my facsimile with our peers - this playbook is just for you and me.

1. Remind Apple that they love saying “We comply with all local laws and regulations in every country that we operate in”. I know that technically Apple “operates” in the Cayman Islands, but you know what I mean. Lay down the law with them!

2. Point out that all of their competitors are working with you (even if it is not true) and they risk being the odd man out. Remind them that they were late to the NSA table on PRISM, and they need to be on the ball if they want to salvage their relationship with the FBI. In case you misplaced your copy, I’m sending you over my copy of Ed’s slide.

3. Ask for a little favor at first, something that’s not so important to you, like censoring some random app. When they refuse to cooperate, throw a massive hissy fit and claim that they are insulting all Americans everywhere. Then ask for another little favor, something which you think they have a 50/50 chance of accepting. If they refuse, then throw another hissy fit and come up with a new request. In they refuse again, repeat again, until they comply.

4. Once they comply, and trust me, they are Apple, they’ll eventually comply, you need to start ratcheting up the requests quickly - this is when you drop the censorship asks and focus on the technology asks.

5. If they balk again, threaten them with closing all Apple Stores and banning the sale of Apple products. If they balk at this, then poke some holes in the warranties they provide for their products, let the public know that they are getting cheated and organise some Occupy-like protests outside Apple stores (make sure you bring enough eggs). That will at least give the shareholders a fright! I know that China accounts for about $58 billion of Apple’s revenue, but Americans still contribute a fair share to the house that Jobs built. Use that leverage while you still have it!

6. Once they have turned, and they always turn, you’ll get whatever backdoor workaround you want. After they turn, don’t forget to issue them with our standard PR and media relations guidelines and tactics so we can get this story out of the news and focus on more important things, like puppy dogs and ice cream.

Don’t worry about those detractors who are telling you that this case will provide “precedent” for bad actors like me and Lil’ Kim. Confucious says - “precedent schmecedent”. If you don’t build this, we will! Hope that helps buddy and I look forward to seeing you at Fadi’s BBQ!

Tue, May 23, 2017

Last week Twitter came under attack from a DDoS attack orchestrated by the Chinese authorities. While such attacks are not uncommon for websites like Twitter, this one proved unusual. While the Chinese authorities use the Great Firewall to block harmful content from reaching its citizens, it now uses DDoS attacks to take down content that appears on websites beyond its borders. For the Chinese authorities, it is not simply good enough to “protect” the interests of Chinese citizens at home - in their view of cyber sovereignty, any content that might harm China’s interests must be removed, regardless of where the website is located.

And so last week the Chinese authorities determined that Twitter was the target. In particular, the authorities targeted the Twitter account for Guo Wengui (https://twitter.com/KwokMiles), the rebel billionaire who is slowly leaking information about corrupt Chinese government officials via his Twitter account and through his YouTube videos. Guo appeared to ramp up his whistle-blowing efforts last week and the Chinese authorities, in turn, ramped up theirs.

Mon, Dec 12, 2016

It’s been three years since Eric Schmidt proclaimed that Google would chart a course to ending online censorship within ten years. Now is a great time to check on Google’s progress, reassess the landscape, benchmark Google’s efforts against others who share the same goal, postulate on the China strategy and offer suggestions on how they might effectively move forward.

Flowers left outside Google China’s headquarters after its announcement it might leave the country in 2010. Photo: Wikicommons.

What has Google accomplished since November 2013?

The first thing they have accomplished is an entire rebranding of both Google (now Alphabet) and Google Ideas (now Jigsaw). Throughout this blog post, reference is made to both new and old company names.

Google has started to develop two main tools which they believe can help in the fight against censorship. Jigsaw’s DDoS protection service, Project Shield, is effectively preventing censorship-inspired DDoS attacks and recently helped to repel an attack on Brian Krebs’ blog. The service is similar to other anti-DDoS services developed by internet freedom champions and for-profit services like Cloudflare.

Thu, Nov 24, 2016

Facebook is considering launching a censorship tool that would enable the world’s biggest social network to “enter” the China market. Sadly, nobody will be surprised by anything that Mark Zuckerberg decides to do in order to enter the China market. With such low expectations, Facebook is poised to usurp Apple as China’s favorite foreign intelligence gathering partner. If the company launches in China using this strategy they will also successfully erase any bargaining power that other media organizations may hold with the Chinese authorities.

Tue, Jul 05, 2016

There is a commonly held belief in China that if you have a VPN that works then you should keep quiet about it. In terms of freedom of access to information, the problem with this approach is that access to knowledge suddenly is a secret. Today we are launching a project that we hope will destroy that model.

Our newest website, Circumvention Central (CC), aims to provide real-time information and data about circumvention solutions that work in China. Since 2011, we have been collecting data about blocked websites in China and now we will add data about the effectiveness of VPNs and other circumvention tools.

We are launching CC with four main objectives in mind.

Our first objective is to help to grow the number of Chinese who circumvent censorship restrictions in China. By sharing our information and data about these tools, we hope to show a wider audience which circumvention tools are working.

Our second objective is to improve the circumvention experience for users in China by bringing transparency to tool performance. We will measure these tools on speed (how quickly popular websites are loaded) and on stability (the extent to which popular websites load successfully).

Very interesting blog. Alot of blogs I see these days don't really provide anything that I'm interested in, but I'm most definately interested in this one. Just thought that I would post and let you know.happy wheels

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